


King's Final Court

by Delirious21



Category: Transformers: Prime
Genre: Depression, Failed Experiments, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Past Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2020-09-22 23:50:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20330563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Delirious21/pseuds/Delirious21
Summary: Predaking finally has someone to tell his story to, albeit a Prime and three human younglings.





	1. Predaking's Tale

**Author's Note:**

> Read the Epilogue for context in first two chapters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Predaking's point of view.

Shockwave had proposed the experiment to Megatron nearly a vorn ago. Only now were we witnessing the first wave of results. Structures frail, dull, sparks that flickered with life for scarce, startling moments. They were stunted: only quarter my size, some smaller. They had been contained within test tubes for the duration of their development: they knew nothing of the world they were forced to die upon. 

Their only breaths of the pollinated, life-engorged air turned stale and bitter in their mouths, their shattering cries for mercy decaying every bit of life left. And then, what little bit of spark they had floated away on the perfect, gentle breeze they had never known. And I can only fear that they were carried anywhere but to the feet of Primus himself. 

The last of three crippled and screeched it’s agonizing howls, and Shockwave’s single, glowing optic settled on my hulking frame, settled in the corner. I avoided the confused brush of his field, my own pulled as close to my chassis as it ever was. 

If I could feel any remorse in that moment, it was not for the grieving scientist whose experiment had gone terribly wrong, but for my reanimated kin, who had only experienced life for a dark, shadow engulfed, horrifying moment before they were swung back into that same empty eternity they had risen from, among all the miserable souls of their kin and those they had once called brother. 

It is possible, I suppose, that the madman did not understand why the trial had failed, but I had. Or, I find I do in this time, when I’ve been gifted an abundance of my own empty space to reflect upon the horrors I partook. 

The dead should remain deceased: to bring them back only reanimates the suffering that first killed them. 

At the time of the first results, I was still believed to be nothing but a beast: thoughtless, wordless, and unopinionated. But I could only keep the words stuck in my throat for so long. Starscream knows now that I am more than a measly beast. 

Yet Shockwave still considered me a pet: and he, the master. That one role, I found, I could not bring myself to step out of. I was nothing more than a temporary success, one with overlooked emotion and pain, yet I was still too weak, too frail, to guide myself. I still needed his command to attack. To stand down. To be silenced. To speak. 

But time changes a mind. It morphs what could not be molded into something so imperceivably beautiful. And, true, I am but a beast with words, and it is clear that my perception of beauty is quite odd in comparison to the beauty standards of the human race, but is beauty not beauty? 

I fear I have been trapped within my own mind for far too long. 

But, I imagine you do not understand. You are, after all, only human. 

Shockwave made a habit of keeping me near when a new set of clones woke. He believed that a possibly familiar face might soothe the reanimated. But I remember that feeling from when I was the one being jolted back to life. Nobody is your friend: no one familiar. Every face is new, a frightening, jagged piece of metal who always hated you, who is there for the sole purpose of making your second chance miserable and drain the hope, the fight, from your very core. 

So, naturally, I was present when the first took a step forward. I shifted in my corner and their dull orange optics crawled over the space between us. She was small, still resembling the stunted growth of her predecessors, and her frame hissed and whined when she inhaled, but she still had it in her to snap at Shockwave when he approached. I thought for a moment that he would strike her. His servo hovered in the air, stilled by the deep echo of  _ his  _ master’s words.

“Shockwave. Do introduce us to your most recent success.”

Us. Of course Starscream had to be hovering at Megatron’s elbow, ever timid in the presence of those larger than himself, but too egotistical to admit it or alter his age-old habits. 

As the more “civilized” mechs conversed, I watched the femme rise to her pedes. Her wings, once immensely powerful, now trembled and shriveled against her frame, weak and broken. I waited for her to drop, but she stood, still and solid, as she quickly adapted to the pull of the new planet’s gravity and it’s light, shrinking atmosphere. 

They kept us separated and caged on the lower decks of the Nemesis. They latched muzzles over our snouts and immobilization cuffs around our ankles. She slept with her back to me, and it was all I could do to snort and grunt and try so desperately to gain her attention. Finally, I was not alone. Yet, the only being who could save me seemed to refuse my existence. 

I suppose it was possible she viewed me as the enemy, or maybe she believed I was weak. I had not fought my captors: so maybe she was right. I had grown weak. Or was I created weak? 

The memories of my reign are faint: the flashes of a conquering, beloved ruler are brisk and bitter lights that stings the optics of any foolish enough to stare. 

I cannot remember my birthplace, nor the names of my closest companions. I cannot recall whether I was an inherent of royalty or an elected king. I cannot remember the designation of my bonded, nor the color of my heir’s wings. I can only fathom myself a horrible ruler: that I suffered at the hand of my own trusted court. I do not want to believe this truth I have taught myself, but I know no alternative. 

Starscream was a regular visitor to the femme and I. He radiated smug contempt and kicked at our cages, spilled our energon. He enjoyed the taunting, and we tolerated. If we didn’t, we’d die. If there was ever a time when I longed to rip his sniveling, ugly spark from its chambers, it was then. I was foolish. He noticed. He made it a point, after that, to attack her.

She growled and lunged, and I gave up. 

It was late, long after Starscream’s last visit and our latest energon cube, that I noticed she had finally given up as well. 

I closed my optics and rested my head upon my crossed paws. I prayed that the universe have mercy and take me home as it had my kin, but morning still came.


	2. Predaking's Tale Continued

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From Predaking's point of view.

Her body had been removed with the cages, a young mech and a fresh energon cube in their place. Everything about him was pale and sleek and exhaustingly curious. His plates twitched when he met my gaze. He practically ran to me. I didn’t realize what I was doing until my jaws closed around his ankle. He yelped and writhed away. A growl resonated through my chassis, more towards myself than him. He had done nothing: I was the beast pest nipping at his ankles. As he sat, licking carefully at his leaking wound, I curled tighter around myself, muzzle tucked against stomach and tail draped over optics. 

I never knew the femme’s name: I never even told her mine . . . And now her replacement would know the same fate. To return to death, though not alone, but secluded. Removed. 

I was so deeply immersed in my thoughts I hardly felt the gentle press of an alien energy grazing my own. I rumbled a warning to the younger mech; one he promptly ignored. He didn’t seem concerned with the fact that we were trapped, though not in individual cells, but trapped nonetheless. How could the lack of freedom not bother him when it was all I knew?

His field reached out further, grasping desperately at the edges of my plating now. In an ill attempt, I tried to furl away from him when he wriggled beneath my tail and licked at my cheek, but his persistence quickly trumped my pathetic disdain. The warmth of his tiny frame was alarming, yet comforting. Rationally, I knew a frame should not have been so hot to the touch as his was then, but I had been waiting for that simplistic physical contact for ages, and I couldn’t bare to endure any longer. 

A low purr started in the mechling’s chassis and he wrapped his tail around my hind leg to pull himself closer. I drew a heavy breath of his thick scent, the distinct hormones spiking a reaction in my nether regions. 

He tucked his head beneath my chin and pressed his fiery plating to mine. I lifted a leg to relieve some of my discomfort, and he slipped a sly little paw down the center. A pit settled in my stomach and I couldn’t help the repulsion. Someone so new to life on this planet, someone so ignorant and delicate and stunning should not entangle themselves with my hulking, beaten frame. A part of me knew the mechling only endured my presence in hopes of satiating his heat, but another, more hopeful chunk of my spark longed for him to be real. I wasn’t certain either way.

My body’s long dormant coding reared to life when the mechling scuffed his paw against my groin. He disentangled our frames and rolled to his back in a playful show of submission. For a fleeting moment, I scrutinized his dire need for release: had he been kept in heat until now, only to be thrown into the pen of a revolting, starving beast?

It was clear that the mech’s heat had gone untreated for far too long. His EM field was anxious, engulfing my own in its fiery lashes, and his plating burned scorch marks on the floor where he lay. I couldn’t allow his suffering to further. Nor could I deny the sire coding in my system and it’s repulsing reaction to the beautiful carrier so near. 

The mechling squirmed when I lurched to my pedes, excitement all but pulsating off his armor. If not for the immobilization cuffs clamped tight to our ankles, I would have rid myself of my horridly rigid and stiff beast mode and taken him in the more satisfyingly intimate form of mech. But, what would it matter? This mech’s armor was never scuffed, chipped, shattered. What did he know of experience? Of intimacy. What did  _ I  _ know of intimacy?

The pale little mech scuffled around onto his lithe front. He wagged his tail back and forth in a tantalizing swish past his wide hips. The lips of his valve secreted a healthy, familiar, neon lubricant. His spike remained sheathed, and for a moment I longed to see it. 

His tail whispered past my cod piece in a tease. His wide green optics circled on me when he glanced back. My spine arched at the cold rush of air over my spike. Perhaps you are too young to hear such talk. Very well. 

The mechling grew strong and healthy, carrying a batch of my bitlits. I should have been proud, knowing that my artificial form remained fertile, and that I would father the first of Earth’s predacons. Yet, I was disgusted. What had I done but take advantage of another being, merely for the sake of survival. The carrier was never given a name, was only cycles old when I sparked him. My instincts and my body have only served to reaffirm the atrocity I am. 

Starscream was sent to fetch me when the mechling entered labor. He was snotty, kicking my sides and grumbling about the abominations my sparklings would be. In Shockwave’s lab, I assumed my neutral position in the corner, watching from afar. As much research and preparation as Shockwave had endured, it was a shock to us all when the sparklings were stillborn. Megatron shook his helm, as if he were disappointed in the failed experiment. But it was life, not chemicals in a dish. My life, the mechling’s life, the certainty of our existence shattered before us. If we were unable to reproduce, what purpose did we serve? To continue on as pet and soldier when we were once gods, praised and revered? 

So hear I lie, spouting nonsense to three humans and an Autobot, waiting for my spark to fade. And what does it mean? Nothing. I have no legacy; all that will remain is the ground I tread on. Not a king but a failed experiment. 

I beg of you, allow me to die now, so that I may be rejoined with my colony. We belong in the stars, Prime. We have never seen optic to optic, but if you find it in your spark to leave me here, I will leave no qualm with you. 


	3. Finally, to the Stars

Optimus Prime stood from where he sat against the trunk of an ancient sycamore. The light was fading from Predaking’s optics, and he no longer had the strength to keep his helm held up. 

Spark pounding, Optimus knelt next to him, carefully resting a servo on his back. “Rest easy, ancient one,” he whispered. “Return to your clan and be at peace.”

Rafael was the first child to mimic the Prime, placing a hand atop the rapidly cooling metal of Predaking’s side. Jack and Miko slowly did the same. 

Spark extinguished, Predaking began to fade from under their touch. What once was compact and terrifying turned to ash beneath them, returning to a soil it never belonged to. Optimus shuttered his optics, an ache in his chassis, empathy for the Cybertronian. Enemy or not, no one deserved to live and die alone. If not for the war, Predaking never would have had to endure his second coming. Gritting his dentae, Optimus opened his optics just in time to see a swirl of red and orange sparks, not unlike a fireworks display, rise from Predaking’s ashes. They twirled through the dense forest air, spinning around the children, brushing against them and dancing along Optimus’ servos. It was gorgeous, to witness a spark return to its home in the stars. So joyous and relieved. 

Together, the king’s honorary court watched Predaking’s spark skitter through the foliage and disappear into the night sky, where it belonged.


	4. Epilogue

It was Optimus’ decision to make contact with the lone life signal. Neither Autobot nor Decepticon, it was fading fast, and the generosity in his spark would not allow him to ignore it. Ratchet reluctantly opened the groundbridge, not after scolding Optimus, and when he passed through he entered an eerily silent forest. The birds, the crickets, were all hushed, and he understood why when he spotted Predaking stretched out in a clearing not fifty yards away. 

Optimus’s helm snapped to the side when a meek voice gasped, “I-i-is that Predak-king?”

Miko bounced on her toes. “Fuck yeah it is!” 

Jack shushed her. 

Optimus ran a servo down his face, resisting the urge to scold the children. Now was not the time. Instead, he commanded them to stay back while he approached the injured predacon. There was energon everywhere, soaked into the mossy forest floor, splattered on surrounding sycamores and pines, seeping from the gashes on Predaking’s side. The mech’s optics trailed Optimus as he approached, but they were groggy, not quite focused. 

Optimus held out his servos to show he meant no harm. “Predaking, will you cooperate with medical attention?” He eyed another wound above the dragon’s left optic. Energon pooled in the divot beneath the optic, trailing down the side of his face when there was too much. 

Predaking growled, a wet gurgling sound more than anything. “Let me die,” he coughed. “I would not have attempted to escape the Nemesis if I knew I would survive.”

Pausing a second, Optimus calmly said, “I may be an Autobot, but do not allow that to get in the way of your health.”

“If you are so desperate. . .” he faded into a rasping fit. “I have no court. A king must always die with his court.” 

Optimus hesitated a moment, not having to look down to know the children had followed him. They were young, too young to experience the slow taking of death over a healthy spark, but it wasn’t something to run from either. Death was to be respected. “Very well. I, then, will serve as your court.” 

Predaking lifted his helm just enough to nod. “You have my thanks, Prime. And company.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
